PlagueWatch 2020-23 - Coronavirus

[YmoBeThere]

Apparently he used data from Johns Hopkins:

In the article his exact words were "Around June 10 COVID-19 deaths increased four-fold" which was completely untrue. That Johns Hopkins graph is the ratio of "Index of New Dead/New Cases Resolved" whatever that is. Maybe one of the docs can chime in.

Looking at the data, this is a tiny data set that a single death could cause movement. One week in that chart contained exactly zero deaths. Hint: it was in June. Sadly, this data would hardly be conclusive in any real world context, IMHO. There were two spikes, given the underlying dataset, I would look first to reporting anamolies(reclassification of deaths, delayed reportig, etc.) than anything having to do with a drug intervention.

[Bostondevil]

If one more person brings up hydroxy wanker chloroquine around here, I'm going to scream.

The answer to whether or not HCQ helps with covid 19 is "who the wanker knows"? The effectiveness of this drug in this disease has been tainted. All results pro or con are going to be politicized. Everyone reporting on it has an agenda. Discussions of it can't help but take on a partisan bent. If I were a mod, I'd put a moratorium on mentioning HCQ in this thread. Whether it helps or not (unclear), it certainly isn't a miracle cure. We'll probably have better data on a vaccine before we get any kind of a clear picture on HCQ in the treatment of covid 19. Really, let's stop talking about it.

[johnb]

Say, Sturgis, South Dakota, beginning on Friday?

It’d be a long drive for me, but I’d be there if you can get a robust core group of my favorite Duke players, and—given the proposed location—if you can get Preston Sturges, Barbara Stanwick, Veronica Lae, Joel McRae, William Demarest, and Rudy Vallee. Though I have a hunch that a few of the latter folks may not be available.

[OldPhiKap]

If one more person brings up hydroxy wanker chloroquine around here, I'm going to scream.

The answer to whether or not HCQ helps with covid 19 is "who the wanker knows"? The effectiveness of this drug in this disease has been tainted. All results pro or con are going to be politicized. Everyone reporting on it has an agenda. Discussions of it can't help but take on a partisan bent. If I were a mod, I'd put a moratorium on mentioning HCQ in this thread. Whether it helps or not (unclear), it certainly isn't a miracle cure. We'll probably have better data on a vaccine before we get any kind of a clear picture on HCQ in the treatment of covid 19. Really, let's stop talking about it.

Amen.

[budwom]

Sturgis is in some beautiful rolling hills. Someone is looking for a reason to go to NORTH Dakota, though, so maybe Pierre?

Jerry Lundegaard went there to get his wife killed, so there's always that...

[jv001]

If we are heading toward the rapture, can we set up a DBR gathering? There are a few of you, probably more than a few, that I would like to visit/meet. Perhaps a long weekend somewhere.

If we know Him, we'll see that happen and like you, I'm looking forward to meeting DBR posters.

[Lord Ash]

Of course you are absolutely correct. The ideal vaccine trial would be a challenge trial; vaccinate one group with the real vaccine, one with a placebo (saline), then introduce the virus right into their noses and see what happens.

Short of that, the more common an infection is, the easier it is to prove efficacy of a vaccine. I think in this case the answer lies in having a huge number of people from a wide variety of places enrolled, and then doing careful follow-up (because asymptomatic infection should also have to be tracked).

Okay, can I ask you, rsv, and everyone else here a practical question?

So we are going through reopening plans for my school district here in NJ.

Right now we are at the point where we are saying that windows must remain closed, because we want to minimize the possibility of breezes moving the sickness across the room. We are going to rely on univents, which bring in up to 20 percent fresh air, and air conditioners aimed up.

This seem... foolish to me.

Any docs here have any input here? This feels very important, and I feel like we are not on the right path with this.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

Okay, can I ask you, rsv, and everyone else here a practical question?

So we are going through reopening plans for my school district here in NJ.

Right now we are at the point where we are saying that windows must remain closed, because we want to minimize the possibility of breezes moving the sickness across the room. We are going to rely on univents, which bring in up to 20 percent fresh air, and air conditioners aimed up.

This seem... foolish to me.

Any docs here have any input here? This feels very important, and I feel like we are not on the right path with this.

My wife is on the reopening committee for our NYC public elementary school - building was built in the early 60s so not ancient but not state of the art either. She told me yesterday that I believe the plan is no air conditioning but windows will always be open - even in the winter - as they feel that is the safest. I don't know if that decision was made at the school level, district level, or NYC DOE level. Like many older buildings in NY, the building tends to run warm in the winter. The air conditioners tend to be somewhat loud and distracting so even under normal circumstances I think the teachers try to minimize usage. I believe one parent brought up a district in Bergen County that is getting filtration systems or something like that and the principal made it clear that that was not in the budget.

That being said, I am also curious to hear what the experts here say - I appreciate their input.

Feel free to PM me and I am happy to give you some more info - we don't open until after Labor Day (probably similar to you) so though they are very focused, decisions are still rapidly evolving as we have a little time.

[OldPhiKap]

If we know Him, we'll see that happen and like you, I'm looking forward to meeting DBR posters.

FWIW, I am much more impressive virtually than actually.

And actually, I am pretty disappointing virtually.

[sagegrouse]

Jerry Lundegaard went there to get his wife killed, so there's always that...

If we're talking North Dakota, there only two places -- Fargo and the Badlands.

[JasonEvans]

I'm sure many of you have heard of NextDoor. It is a website that provides bulletin boards for local communities.

Anyway, this morning someone posted on my local NextDoor that they are looking for a doctor who will prescribe a cocktail of Hydroxichloroquine, Zinc, and Azythromycin (I'm sure I spelled some of those wrong, but you know what I mean). The poster acknowledged that doing so would be against FDA guidelines and perhaps illegal, but they were sure there must be doctors who would do it. The poster then concluded by saying once he had his dose on this cocktail of drugs, he planned to resume a normal life because he is certain this will make him immune to the Coronavirus.

Would it be bad form for me to reply and say that I think the first thing he should do is go to the Covid ward at the local hospital and give all those patients a nice hug? Goodness knows those poor people could use a hug.

[cspan37421]

I'm sure many of you have heard of NextDoor. It is a website that provides bulletin boards for local communities.

Anyway, this morning someone posted on my local NextDoor that they are looking for a doctor who will prescribe a cocktail of Hydroxichloroquine, Zinc, and Azythromycin (I'm sure I spelled some of those wrong, but you know what I mean). The poster acknowledged that doing so would be against FDA guidelines and perhaps illegal, but they were sure there must be doctors who would do it. The poster then concluded by saying once he had his dose on this cocktail of drugs, he planned to resume a normal life because he is certain this will make him immune to the Coronavirus.

Would it be bad form for me to reply and say that I think the first thing he should do is go to the Covid ward at the local hospital and give all those patients a nice hug? Goodness knows those poor people could use a hug.

I didn't know you lived next door to the _________________________ [redacted to avoid getting dinged] !

(dying is easy, comedy is hard, esp. with rules to follow)

[aimo]

I'm sure many of you have heard of NextDoor. It is a website that provides bulletin boards for local communities.

Anyway, this morning someone posted on my local NextDoor that they are looking for a doctor who will prescribe a cocktail of Hydroxichloroquine, Zinc, and Azythromycin (I'm sure I spelled some of those wrong, but you know what I mean). The poster acknowledged that doing so would be against FDA guidelines and perhaps illegal, but they were sure there must be doctors who would do it. The poster then concluded by saying once he had his dose on this cocktail of drugs, he planned to resume a normal life because he is certain this will make him immune to the Coronavirus.

Would it be bad form for me to reply and say that I think the first thing he should do is go to the Covid ward at the local hospital and give all those patients a nice hug? Goodness knows those poor people could use a hug.

Actually, that response would go right along with most of the threads I see on my Nextdoor page. Idiocy + snark = looonngggg thread of arguments and insults from everyone, leading to the original post being closed.

[budwom]

Can any of our medical experts tell me if there's any hydroxychloroquine in Hydrox cookies? You'd think so by the name...asking for a friend!

[halcyon]

I'm sure many of you have heard of NextDoor. It is a website that provides bulletin boards for local communities.

Anyway, this morning someone posted on my local NextDoor that they are looking for a doctor who will prescribe a cocktail of Hydroxichloroquine, Zinc, and Azythromycin (I'm sure I spelled some of those wrong, but you know what I mean). The poster acknowledged that doing so would be against FDA guidelines and perhaps illegal, but they were sure there must be doctors who would do it. The poster then concluded by saying once he had his dose on this cocktail of drugs, he planned to resume a normal life because he is certain this will make him immune to the Coronavirus.

Would it be bad form for me to reply and say that I think the first thing he should do is go to the Covid ward at the local hospital and give all those patients a nice hug? Goodness knows those poor people could use a hug.

Our local NextDoor is - at times - pretty fascinating. Sometimes discussions devolve into heated arguments and the occasional post that's so incoherent that it borders on art.

We also have a local doctor here who advertises his use of Hydroxychloroquine + Zinc + azithromycin to treat COVID patients. He was interviewed on CBN the other day (advertised as a "COVID Doc" very misleadingly, IMO). I started to post the link here but do not wish to further that debate.

[cato]

Our local NextDoor is - at times - pretty fascinating. Sometimes discussions devolve into heated arguments and the occasional post that's so incoherent that it borders on art.

We also have a local doctor here who advertises his use of Hydroxychloroquine + Zinc + azithromycin to treat COVID patients. He was interviewed on CBN the other day (advertised as a "COVID Doc" very misleadingly, IMO). I started to post the link here but do not wish to further that debate.

Someone in our neighborhood who has been very, uh, active on NextDoor and FB about local school issues (advocating for 100% online school, instead of the current system where families can opt for either 100% online or in-person, which will start online and hopefully move to in-person if local conditions, families, teachers and school staff all get on board) somehow talked his way onto local news as an expert on these issues. He works at an online gaming company and posts on social media.

The outlook for our country is not bright if we do not turn this ship around.

[throatybeard]

Thanks for the work providing the links. I follow these kinds of sources somewhere between regularly and intermittently.

Although I agree with your overall point, including the “spirit” of the rant, I do dissent on a particular, crucial issue. Recent polls and anecdotal examples (increased mask-wearing) appear to show that at least on the issue of trusting scientific and medical experts, a majority of Americans do now, some belatedly, trust them, and do not listen to fakers. A significant minority of Americans, yes, are behaving idiotically and stupidly. (I guess that’s redundundant — the logical spelling of that word, imo.)

The reason it seems “we (society) have forgotten how to think” is that the tens of millions of American idiots, even though a clear minority, can do untold damage to themselves and their fellow idiots but also to sane, sensible, desperately-trying-to-behave-safely non-idiots.

We are at a World Historical Disaster moment, in which the idiot-minority has an insidious veto power over sane policy, and even life itself. The death-dealing culprit is this veto-wielding minority in society, not society itself. And yes, I do understand that this minority receives both explicit and implicit encouragement from some in high places.

I've become convinced that we need to pivot from experts to professionals, lexically. A bunch of people, inanely, have decided they hate experts. What we can accomplish with a terminology change is subject to a ceiling, but on the margin, I feel like we'd be making more headway if we called these people pros rather than experts, just as the poo in which we find ourselves might have been knee- instead of waist-deep had physical distancing emerged rather than social distancing.

[MarkD83]

I'm sure many of you have heard of NextDoor. It is a website that provides bulletin boards for local communities.

Anyway, this morning someone posted on my local NextDoor that they are looking for a doctor who will prescribe a cocktail of Hydroxichloroquine, Zinc, and Azythromycin (I'm sure I spelled some of those wrong, but you know what I mean). The poster acknowledged that doing so would be against FDA guidelines and perhaps illegal, but they were sure there must be doctors who would do it. The poster then concluded by saying once he had his dose on this cocktail of drugs, he planned to resume a normal life because he is certain this will make him immune to the Coronavirus.

Would it be bad form for me to reply and say that I think the first thing he should do is go to the Covid ward at the local hospital and give all those patients a nice hug? Goodness knows those poor people could use a hug.

I think I just heard Bostondevil scream

[PackMan97]

NC cases clock in at a fairly low 1600 today continuing to mark a nice streak of days under 2,000 cases. The problem is we ran just under 10,000 tests. I'll let my readers figure out that positivity rate. Hospitalizations also jumped over 100 ending what had been a nice decline from a peak last month.

[gumbomoop]

I've become convinced that we need to pivot from experts to professionals, lexically. A bunch of people, inanely, have decided they hate experts. What we can accomplish with a terminology change is subject to a ceiling, but on the margin, I feel like we'd be making more headway if we called these people pros rather than experts, just as the poo in which we find ourselves might have been knee- instead of waist-deep had physical distancing emerged rather than social distancing.

Enthusiastically, I accept your friendly amendment. Seriously. Words count. And label-words count extra. In this regard, pros is perhaps more persuasive than professionals, especially the second or third time through the lineup.

And yes, physical is less ideologically threatening than social. I myself am enamored of the Britism, social housing, but that dog won’t hunt over here. Ftm, affordable housing is viewed by many Americans as a Marxist plot. Not by all the lefties who can’t afford to house themselves and their families, but by respectable folks who worry about the neighborhood.

I’m for making headway at the margins, short term and long term.